The Mystery of the Missing Gingerbread
by Hatheny Lurey Dralaw
Summary: A little Christmas story - Watson helps Holmes solve the mystery of the missing gingerbread. One-shot.


**The Mystery of the Missing Gingerbread**

"Watson, by now I believe you are well-used to my methods of deduction enough so as to enable me to deduce certain things about your person without running the risk of causing some offence, slight or otherwise," my friend remarked one December evening. I was jolted out of my doze by this long introduction into a conversation I was not expecting. Seeing my bleary-eyed bewilderment, he smiled and repeated the statement. I sat up properly and folded the broadsheet away from my face.

"But of course, Holmes!" I exclaimed. "What of it?"

"Watson, I am faced with the most inexplicable of mysteries this evening," he said by way of answer. "And I believe you are both the cause and solution to it."

Baffled – yet intrigued (so often those two emotions went hand in hand around my friend) – I leaned forward out of my chair. "Well, in that case Holmes, you had better out with it," I replied. "If I am truly the cause then my sincerest apologies; if I am the solution then I shall be delighted to be of service."

He too leaned forward in his chair, his expression decidedly serious. I wondered what I could have done to put such a look in my friend's eyes; I had seen that gaze directed towards master criminals, but never me.

"Watson," he began slowly. "Today I was intent upon working on my indexes; C through G in particular needed my strict attention. You seem to be slightly concerned with your belt, by the way."

I stared, amazed. "Good heavens! Now really, Holmes, how did you deduce that?"

"Your rhythm as a doctor is regular; today you are on house call. Since you are not for lack of money you had the option of taking a buggy to your destinations; however by the state of your shoes and trouser ends you decided instead to walk. This indicates to me that a man who intends to walk rather than take a buggy is a man who worries about the notches on his belt."

"Brilliant, Holmes!" I said, delighted as ever with his breaking down of such obvious events. His expression remained somewhat mulish, however, and I hastened to add, lest he thought I was endangering my health in the temperamental English weather, "I did come back to fetch my umbrella, though."

This did not seem to relieve him as I thought it would. If anything, his expression grew darker. "Yes," he said. "I realised that you must have come back between the hours of two and four, because that was the time I chose to take a nap."

Slightly bewildered, I nodded. "Yes, it was around three o'clock. What of it?" He exhaled as though he were about to pronounce something dreadful.

"Today Mrs. Hudson brought me a small jar of freshly baked gingerbread cookies; the first batch of the holiday season, apparently. I made sure that I kept one for after my nap. However, when I woke and finished with sorting index F, I turned to the jar and realised, to my disbelief, that it was empty. I have surmised that the cookie could only have disappeared between the hours of two and four o'clock, when I was sleeping."

He patiently waited for me to put two and two together. When I finally did, I exclaimed loudly in disbelief.

"Holmes! Are you in some way inferring that I took the cookies from the cookie jar?!"

"I am afraid it goes a step beyond inference; I am accusing."

"Holmes!"

"There is no use in denying it, my old friend. I have gone through the theory several times, and it seems the only one to fit."

"_Seems?"_ There I saw my escape. "It _seems?_ Yet then, there are still flaws in your reasoning."

This made him frown, his fingers tapping a rhythm on the arm rests. "In what way?" he asked.

"Well, you say the only instant when I could have taken the gingerbread was when you were dozing on your chair after conducting a fierce excavation of indexes

C through G."

"That is so."

"Yet you sleep so lightly, there is no chance you could have missed my coming and going. You have remarked on more than one occasion that you intended to conduct an investigatory trip to Africa to compare the sound of stampeding elephants to my morning walk up and down the stairs."

He nodded, completely unabashed. I took heart anyway.

"In any case, I really was away all day on a house call," I added. "As I said, I only came back once because I was passing anyway and needed to retrieve my umbrella." And it was a good thing I had – the heavens opened every winter, bringing not the desired snow but buckets of merciless rain, at times so harsh they sometimes reminded me of the hails of bullets back in Afghanistan so many years ago. I shrugged myself out of my memories and back into the present situation, which was proving to be almost as dangerous as the past. "Could Mrs. Hudson not have taken one?" I ventured. Holmes dismissed my suggestion with a snort.

"She _made_ the gingerbread, Watson; she would hardly sneak _back up_ here and take it back. In any case, she said they were specifically for me –"

"– and that you were to eat them because you didn't take breakfast and you were getting peaky again?" I finished. By his scowl I knew I had, for once, deduced something correctly. "On that point I would agree with her, Holmes. Did you – oh…" A timid thought struck me.

"I say, Holmes," I hesitated. "When did she bring you the gingerbread?"

He gazed at me quizzically. "Thirty minutes past twelve," he answered.

"Before or after you began sorting?"

He fixed me with a very pointed stare. "After."

"You're sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. She made me stop working and eat one in her presence."

I spent a brief moment marvelling at how a woman can at one instance make a man feel as though he were the strongest in the world, and at another make one feel as though he were an unruly eight-year-old school boy again. By Holmes's expression, I guessed he was mulling this over as well. "And did you eat them during your cleaning?"

He looked up at me, frowning in thought. "Yes. But I specifically saved one for the evening. Watson, what are you getting at?"

I hesitated again. Retrospectively, I realised I had the choice between the scorn of my friend for a ridiculous but plausible conclusion, or the scorn of my friend for a ridiculous and implausible conclusion _and_ stealing. I went with the lesser (though not by much) of two evils.

"Holmes, when a mind is as fiercely engaged as yours can become, it tends to overlook what can be called the 'minor' details. I remember upon one occasion Mrs. Hudson bringing me a plate of sausages as I was reading the paper. I was so focused on the article I was reading that I failed to realise that I had eaten the entire plate. When I finally lowered the paper it was to my utter disbelief and your insistent testimony that I really had finished off the platter. Do you remember that?"

Holmes seemed to remember, as he inhaled slowly through his nose and his brow knitted together. "Yet…" he trailed off. I jumped in before he could say anything more.

"I left the house at eight o'clock in the morning," I said. "You got up at –"

"Twelve o'clock."

I said nothing regarding my friend's habits; this was obviously not the time. "You got up at twelve o'clock. You began sorting. At thirty minutes past twelve Mrs. Hudson brought you the gingerbread. You began eating them. You went back to work. You napped between the hours of –"

"Two and four."

"– of two and four. At around three o'clock I came in to fetch my umbrella and then leave again."

"I remember hearing that in my sleep," interjected Holmes.

"Do you remember me coming into the room?" I asked. I waited a moment for an answer before continuing. "You woke up at four o'clock and habitually began sorting again. Did you eat?" I saw him shake his head, once. "When was the last time you ate?" I asked, somewhat gently.

"Yesterday morning," he said, after a short pause, and then he paused again, as though expecting to be reprimanded. I let it go for the moment, using it only to forward my case.

"Your stomach must have obviously been working automatically. While your mind was consumed with work, your body detected sustenance and directed it to consume. It has happened before, to many people, Holmes. It has happened to me."

A fierce frown had taken over my friend's face as he digested this. "I…can see what you mean, Watson…" he managed. "And yet…and yet…it seems so…_implausible…"_ I nearly jumped in with my answer.

"Well, it is as you always say, Holmes," I reminded him. "If you get rid of the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

He sighed and nodded, leaning back into his chair with a puzzled expression on his face. I smiled and relaxed back into mine, pulling out the broadsheet in front of my eyes as I enjoyed the last lingering taste of gingerbread between my teeth.

The End!


End file.
